Curiosity – What Sank Titanic? My New Score

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I’m excited to share my latest score, for the Discovery television film Curisosity – What Sank Titanic? The film looks at what really happened on the ship, based on true accounts from the survivors, and is narrated by Bill Paxton, from the hit series Big Love. I had the great pleasure of working with the British Emmy-nominated production team Dangerous Films (Zodiak Mediagroup), and in particular the terrific music supervisor Richard Todman. The music is a combination of virtual orchestra, synthesizers and percussion, and features the young Montreal vocalist Fletcher Bryce. It is only playing on US television, and available on US iTunes, but it will go worldwide in 2012, the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

You can view some video excerpts by clicking here

Next showings-
Sunday, Sept 04 Discovery US
Thursday, Sept 08 Science Channel

On iTunes US

My Latest Film Score, on NBC: Who Is Simon Miller?

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I’m thrilled to report that my latest score, the soundtrack to the TV film, Who Is Simon Miller?, will air on NBC, Saturday August 6, at 8pm.

This is a family-friendly thriller set in various parts of Europe, and it features Christine Baranski, Skyler Day, Loren Dean, Robyn Lively and Drew Koles. It was true joy working with the production team from Montreal’s Muse Entertainment, and getting a chance to sit and work with the talented director, Paolo Barzman. His directions really helped shape the sound of the soundtrack, which features dramatic virtual-orchestra cues, rocked by guitar and driving rhythms. Here’s the promo (not my music):

The Roland SH-5: Starship Synth

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Every time I play with my Roland SH-5, I feel like I’m taking the controls of a spaceship of some kind! What an amazing chameleon, this mid-70s synthesizer is: soft, harsh, simple, complex, funky, spaced-out, out-of-control, sweet sounds can be easily coaxed out of it with a little love. The filters are particularly musical, rich, and the ability to mix 5 different sources allows me to create a whole range of tones. Of course, there’s no patch-saving of any kind, so every sound you create remains the same only as long as you don’t touch anything… which is impossible! So I hit ‘record’ and twist away madly, joyously lost in the ever-bountiful ocean of analog waves.

Here’s an example of what its filters sound like:

Improvising With The iHolophone

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I’m in love with Amidio‘s new iPhone app, iHolophone. You play this virtual instrument by dragging your thumbs around two circular controllers that resemble an analog cassette and video game virtual controllers or life counters. You can tap for short sounds or leave your thumb on for sustain. It feels totally fresh, a new way of making music. The app comes with a limited sequencer, hundreds of samples, 160 patterns, etc. Although the accompanying beds are OK, the app really comes to life when you jam with the two controllers. With iHolophone, Amidio, makers of Noise.io and JR Hexatone, confirms its place amongst the leaders in touch-screen music apps.

You can read a good review of iHolophone on the excellent promusicapps site.

Favourite iPhone/iPod Touch Music Apps

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As a user of an iPod Touch, I’ve been trying a bunch of different music creation apps. Here are a few of my faves:

Sonic Wire is so strange, it could only have come out in 2010! A fantastic synthesized-sound generator, it allows me to create a long, looped trace of finger gestures that can then be manipulated in 3D space, with various scales. You can see a video demonstration of it on Zach Gages’ website.This app is based on a real-life interactive installation by Amit Pitaru, exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide.

Backline Calc is like the Swiss-army knife of audio-related calculations. If I need to figure out time in samples, tempo or bars or beats in seconds, minutes, etc, compare tempi in percentage change – it’s all a breeze, and it even includes a very useful file-size calculator.

I’m also enjoying Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers’ Trope, making ambient soundscapes with a few gestures that automatically loop, and jamming over them with my Korg MS2000 (not an app!). There are a dozen moods to choose from which correspond to various musical keys and modes. Like his other apps, Bloom and Air, the experience is as beautiful to look at as it is to hear.

Changing patches in Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere is now made even easier with their app, Omni Live. I sometimes will load 8 different Rhodes patches and switch between them in real-time while noodling, to quickly assess which is the best sound for the cue I’m trying to nail.

And for a little old-school fun while waiting in line somewhere, I break out technoBox, complete with an 808/900 drum machine, a 303 bass-synth clone, and some useful effects. There’s chaining of sequences and saving/loading of sessions (songs). After playing with it for a few minutes, it’s hard for me not to dance!

Scoring CBC’s 18 To Life

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For the past few months, I’ve been composing music for a new CBC prime-time domestic comedy, 18 To Life. The producers and I decided early on that the music production and performances should not be too slick. I opted for some country-blues inspired music, along with simple jazz-blues riffs and rhythms. I bought or rented a bunch of great instruments for this truly fun project: national steel guitar (also known as a Dobro), harmonicas, a banjo, a late-70s Gibson Les Paul, a kazoo (!), etc. I also rely on software instruments like Spectrasonics’ new Trilian basses, RMX with Cajun and Jazz percussion/drum loops, AcousticsampleS‘ Kawai piano, SAM Symphobia and LASS strings.

Produced by Montreal’s Galafilm, the series will premiere January 4, at 8 pm.

Here are a few examples of my cues:

Close The Blinds

Down Home

Flirting On Bench

Kazoo Boogie

Refugee Hop

The Proposal

Prize for Cargo and Nomination for Titanic

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The film Un Cargo pour l’Afrique (A Cargo for Africa) won Best Canadian Feature at Montreal’s 2009 World Film Festival. This prize is voted by the public, and it should help this humble film reach a wider audience. Who Sank The Titanic (also known as Titanic: How It Really Sank), another film which features my music, is nominated in the Best History Documentary Program category of the 2009 Gemini Awards (Canadian television).

Un Cargo pour l’Afrique at Montreal’s World Film Festival

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poster_afrique

I’m thrilled to report that Roger Cantin‘s Un Cargo pour l’Afrique is in the official competition of the Montreal World Film Festival. I composed part of the soundtrack, which includes as well the beautiful songs and voice of Oumar Ndiaye. The music I wrote features traditional african instruments like drums and kora, alongside orchestral strings. I attented the premiere last night, and it was a rousing success! The film features the superb acting of local acting legend Pierre Lebeau, and will be out in Quebec theatres in the second week of September.

While writing the soundtrack, I met and became friends with the very talented Senegalese singer/songwriter Oumar N’Diaye. His infectious joie de vivre, his professionalism and amazing voice make any musical collaboration a real joy. Here are a couple of recent photographs, taken by my wife Brenda Keesal:

oumarndiaye

oumarned

My New Studio

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During the next few months, I’ll be posting text and pics detailing the building of my new studio. It will be in the basement of my house, and will consist of a control room (11 x 18 feet), and a small recording booth. The ceiling will be between 7’6″ and 8′. Here are the first pics, for all you mud lovers out there.

New Film Scoring Blog by Leon Willett

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Award-winning composer Leon Willett offers his analysis of film scoring devices, complete with score and audio examples (Willett’s an excellent mock-up composer). This is a really great resource for composers interested in learning more ‘tricks’ of the trade. The composer also offers one-on-one courses in harmony, counterpoint, creating mock-ups and more. Click here to explore it.

YTV’s In Real Life Soundtrack

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For the past few months, I’ve been composing the music for YTV’s new reality-tv competition series, In Real Life. The music is a mix of action orchestral and power-pop, and it’s been a fantastic challenge for me to keep ramping up the musical adrenaline! Produced by Montreal’s Apartment 11, the series features 12-14-year olds competing in various incredible challenges. I couldn’t have created this music without these amazing tools: Nine Volt Audio libraries, Stylus RMX, StormDrum 1 and 2, Tonehammer instruments. Keep a lookout for new YTV episodes on Wednesday nights, at 7 pm.

Here are some examples of the music I created for the show:

Running Out of Time

Watch Out For Teeth

Battling To The Finish

Hanging Out

Tonehammer Strikes The Sampling World

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Tonehammer

An exciting new player has arrived in the world of sample libraries. Tonehammer, the brainchild of composer Troels Folmann and sound designer Mike Peaslee, offers very affordable, out-of-the-ordinary deep sample collections for the Kontakt virtual instrument. What is ‘deep’ sampling? Most of the instruments offer up to 10x round-robin, assuring that you’re always going to get new sound variations when you strike the same MIDI note twice. Furthermore, many of the instruments/objects were sampled in interesting acoustic spaces. This combination of real spaces and multiple variations adds up to an organic sound. These are truly musical sample collections. The ‘instruments’, of which there are far too many to list here, include sneakers, museum railings, bamboo sticks, whale drum, coins, hangdrum, bathtub, yells, marching band percussion, a sofa, etc. The official website features superb demos. For more info, click here.

My new DVD-Audio: Gratte-Cité

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gratte-cite-medium

I’m proud to say that my new solo electroacoustic music DVD is now out on Montreal’s empreintes DIGITALes label. It was a real joy to be able to have such great artists as Fortner Anderson, Khrystell Burlin, Delphine Measroch and Christian Olsen collaborate with me. The dvd, in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound, features many urban field recordings that are used both as decor and serve as main subjects of my deranged sonic experiments, hence the title (City Scraper) It also contains the art video The Lighthouse, for which I wrote the soundtrack. You can buy the dvd-audio and listen to excerpts by clicking this link.

Since this post, my DVD has gotten this excellent review by Frans DeWaard in Vital Weekly #669:

The DVDs released by Empreintes Digitales don’t contain images, but highly quality music, to be selected as stereo or 5.1 surround sound. In the past I complained about the lack of difference between the various releases on this label, with some exceptions, but the release by Ned Bouhalassa is something different. Bouhalassa has a background as a composer for films and TV series and is from Montréal. He doesn’t seem to belong the academic world that usually inhabits Empreintes Digitales. He works much more like the others around with loops of sounds, more regular synthesizers but every now and then also throws in some breakbeat rhythm. At the same time he uses field recordings (street sounds, natural sounds) and the length of the pieces is not entirely pop song either. The combination of all of this makes this quite a surprising [disc], a great one for this label. Modern electronics without the pretensions, the same idiom and such like. Nice one indeed.